I was able to harvest another handful of beans this morning, and hand pollinate a few more squash.
The garlic had been curing on the picnic table and last night I trimmed, cleaned, strung and hung them, keeping the different varieties apart. Several couldn’t be hung and I brought them in to be used right away. We have so little garlic this year! A little is better than none, though. We’ll leave them hanging in the market tend for a while longer before bringing them inside.
The chamomile in the wattle weave bed is blooming nicely!
I got a picture of the developing gourds from the drum gourd and zucca melon bed. That is most definitely a zucca melon, not a drum gourd. I most definitely got mixed up with the labels. Which means we have no drum gourds developing at all. Not even female flowers.
We do have a couple of Caveman’s Club gourds, though! Well. One, so far. I just hand pollinated another one last night. We’ll see if it takes.
The Purple Peruvian potatoes in their grow bags are looking absolutely lush! The Irish Cobbler are getting yellow and falling over, and the Red Thumb are getting into that stage, but the Purple Peruvian look like they’re going to be growing for quite a while longer.
Last of all was an unusual find, as I was checking the squash to see what might need pollinating. I found a double flower!
Today is the last day of July, and our growing season is quickly running out. I have seen people in my local gardening groups who are even further north than we are, posting pictures of their much larger squash. I wish I knew how theirs are so much further ahead! Things are growing well this year, but I still can’t shake the feeling we are behind. So many squash plants still aren’t even producing female flowers yet.
Ah, well. We’ll get what we get, and every year is another year to improve our soil and growing conditions.
Oh, something I forgot to mention. Last winter, a neighbour who is moving had offered us a shed they needed to get rid of, that I was hoping to use as a chicken coop. Unfortunately, it didn’t handle the rest of the winter well, and they ended up scrapping it entirely. Now that the renter’s cows have been rotated out, I should grab the wagon along with some tools and see about getting that antique wagon chassis in the car graveyard. I still have hopes to build a mobile chicken coop on there.
Little by little, it’ll get done.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 